The Dog House (Harding's World of Romance)

by Nell Harding

  For once he really thought his father was about to say something complimentary, but the moment was stolen by Peewee suddenly shooting off into the forest, just as a large, furry dog came barrelling through, heading straight for the little purebred.

  “He had better not…” Elisabeth began in horror, unable to finish her sentence as the two dogs met in an exchange of growls and sniffs and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  “What the…?” William exploded, wheeling on his son. “Since when have you allowed stray dogs onto the property?”

  Colin stared at the woods blankly, his recent moment of near-success rapidly slipping from sight as the rustling in the bushes continued. “McTavish thinks he comes over the wall from the cottage,” he answered flatly.

  “And you just let this happen?” his father continued, livid, as his mother went pale.

  “Peewee,” she called feebly. “Well, do something, you two, don’t just stand there.”

  Father and son exchanged looks and made a half-hearted foray in the direction of the crashing, but it was too far away and they were too late by the time Peewee trotted back out, tail wagging coquettishly. The larger dog could be heard retreating through the woods at the men’s approach. They looked back at Elisabeth who had buried her face in her hands.

  “I promised Lucy purebred pups for breeding,” she wailed. “I never dreamed that she was at risk of being assaulted on our own grounds.”

  The two men hurried back to the path. William’s eyes blazed as he faced his son. “How did this happen?” he demanded ominously. “If this has happened before, why haven’t you put an end to it?”

  “I had McTavish write a warning letter,” Colin said stiffly. “It seems to have worked. Until now.”

  “Since when have Alistair and Connie kept a dog?” his mother asked suddenly. “The MacPhersons don’t even like animals, a fact I find distasteful as a personality trait but very useful in a renter.”

  “They decided to try living in town for a year,” Colin informed her. “So they sublet Silverbeck for the year, in case they decided to move back.”

  “You let some stranger live in Silverbeck?” his father asked, scandalised. “You know that the last thing we want is a crowd of strangers on the castle grounds. What the dickens were you thinking?”

  “Your father is right,” Elisabeth said in a pained voice, stooping to pick up Peewee and examining her dejectedly. “We only let the MacPhersons stay on as a favour really. I always thought that we could do something much nicer with that old cottage.”

  “Tell the tenant he has to go,” William ordered briskly. “We’ll keep the cottage empty until Alistair makes up his mind, and if he and Connie decide not to come back we can go ahead with renovation plans. Really, this is just scandalous. Not safe to walk in our own garden. Mildred’s pedigree dog molested…”

  Colin threw up his hands before his father could gain too much momentum. “I’ll talk to McTavish,” he said with resignation. It wasn’t his style to evict somebody, but neither was it his property in the end. Perhaps they could give the tenant time to find a new place and work out an arrangement where nobody lost money on rent.

  His father seemed to read his mind. “One week’s notice,” he barked. “And then I want them out. We Parkers are doing enough for the local community without having to fear being attacked in our own home. This is an outrage.”

  Colin sighed and abruptly changed direction. “I’ll go and speak with McTavish now,” he suggested, beating a hasty retreat down the path before William had time to react. Along the way he had time to wonder why he was managing to upset the people he tried hardest to please. Now he was in the dog house with everybody.

  Chapter Twelve

  Fiona was packing her bags in a fury. She still couldn’t believe that Colin would be so heartless as to evict a tenant over the small matter of a dog running loose on his property from time to time. As for his measly one-week notice, she didn’t plan to stay one more day now that she had seen his true colours.

  The letter had been waiting in the mailbox that morning when she came back from her walk, and after a second walk to let out some of her anger, she had spent the rest of the afternoon talking to Sarah and packing up her notes, intending to leave first thing the next morning. Now it was late evening and she was still finishing the last of her packing and cleaning, dressed in her pajamas, slowed in the process of packing by tiredness and the neediness of a dog that feared abandonment.

  “Come stay with me until we find you a new place,” Sarah had begged but Fiona was adamant. There was no way that she was going to stick around anywhere that there was a risk of running into Colin.

  “It’s not as if he’s likely to drop by the pub,” Sarah had reasoned. “The risk of meeting him again is tiny.”

  “I think it’s best if I go back to my mom’s for a bit,” Fiona had said flatly. “There I can put my head down and work with no distractions, nothing to remind me of my brief foray into enemy turf. Plus there’s some research I can do at the university archives and some ideas I want to bounce off my old supervisor.”

  Her anger and scorn for Colin were so complete that she was fairly sure she could avoid the pining stage that usually followed a failed relationship and skip right to the feeling of complete alienation. She was relieved that she hadn’t had the time to spill her true feelings for him after their last time together, to humiliate herself with confessions of love and a longing to be sure that it was reciprocal, that it meant something to Colin. In the end he was nothing more than what she had originally thought, a spoilt, self-centred, rich playboy who preferred to cut himself off from reality and could calmly evict somebody without even talking to them, without making sure that they had somewhere to go.

  Well, she would tell him where to go if she ever saw his handsome, deceptive face again. Not that they were likely to cross paths again, she thought bitterly as she stacked her books into heavy boxes and lugged them to the back of her car.

  On her way back, she saw Livingstone following her movements with a worried air and dropped down to her haunches to wrap him in a hug. “I’ll be back for you, I promise,” she told the shaggy head, pressing her forehead against his. “You’ll just stay with Sarah for a short time until I figure out where I can stay, where there’s room for you too.”

  The dog gave a forlorn whimper that broke Fiona’s heart. “It isn’t your fault, sweetheart,” she told him earnestly. “I was an idiot, trusting the wrong person. I should have known to stick to the unfailing, uncomplicated love that a dog offers. I’ve learned my lesson this time.”

  Still he stuck to her closely, following her back and forth from the car and nuzzling up against the back of her knees for reassurance. She bent down to pat him and was surprised to feel a tear run down her cheek.

  “One last walk by moonlight, my little friend of friends?” she offered, realising how much she would miss this glen and the long walks in open heather, the sheltering hills. For a short while this had felt like home, like she had found the right place for herself, her interests and work. And, unlikely as it seemed, for her heart.

  Resolutely she stood up, shutting off that chain of thought as she looked for her boots and a thick hooded sweatshirt. Her father had always said that you couldn’t measure a person until you saw how they reacted in a crisis. Of course, that same man had disappeared when things became tough, so perhaps he wasn’t the best reference. But how could she reconcile Colin the easy-going, attentive and friendly man with the heartless landlord?

  It was hard for her not to think in terms of class, in terms of English domination over poor Scots, although she was trying hard not to go down that road. It was a difficult habit to break after her family and the groups she had associated with during her relationship with Cormac. Still, she had willingly allowed Colin to draw her close, so it was her own decision. Her own fault, as it turned out.

  With Livingstone at her heels, she stepped out into the cold evening. She stuffed her hands a
nd the leash into the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled the hood up, throwing her head back to admire the stars. When the Highland nights were clear, the star-gazing was amazing, with far more stars visible than she had ever seen from the Edinburgh area.

  Livingstone seemed invigorated by the night air and by whatever night-roaming animals he could smell as he ran from side to side, sniffing excitedly.

  “C’mon, ‘Stone,” Fiona called after him, giving a whistle while she waited, stomping her feet against the cold which bit through the flimsy legs of her pajamas. They had cut through the back yard onto the driveway and she wanted to head down to cross the main road toward their usual trails.

  Normally Livingstone was well-behaved as long as Fiona was with him, responding well to voice orders and never running too far away. But tonight he hesitated on the driveway, turning toward the direction of the castle and looking back over his shoulder at Fiona almost apologetically. Then he turned and sprinted down the drive, leaving Fiona to curse in vain and jog along as best she could in her rubber boots.

  For one last time she approached the castle in stealth, this time more easily along the long driveway feeling well-concealed by the darkness. She doubted that there would be much outside activity at this hour and part of her didn’t care anyway, with nothing left to lose. Well, almost nothing in terms of eviction. But she would rather leave without seeing Colin again, to be “the one that got away” rather than “the one I threw out because of her impossible dog.” She was enough of a poet to be sensitive to the difference.

  The driveway was long and Livingstone was moving much faster than Fiona. She arrived breathless at the outbuildings to find no sign of her dog, tilting her head to listen instead for his careless movement through the woods. Instead she heard the unmistakeable, regular splashing sound of a dog swimming.

  She wheeled and dashed down to the lake, barely able to make out his head as it cut a V-shaped wake through the dark water, heading toward a small island off-shore. She shook her head in disbelief, with no idea of what had gotten into Livingstone’s head this evening. She found herself thinking about dog psychology, wondering how much of this behaviour could be explained simply by the stress of seeing her packing up her bags, as she stood helplessly by the shore.

  Then she remembered the rowboat she had seen on her first surreptitious visit to the castle grounds during the wedding. She ran along the shore and soon found it, a small duck-hunting boat loosely tied to a wooden jetty. With a feeling of disbelief for the way her final evening in Glen Murray was unfolding, she climbed awkwardly into the boat and cast off, pulling on the heavy wooden oars with cold fingers and trying not to splash herself.

  At least now she made better progress than the dog, who was a strong but slow swimmer. She caught up with him just as they neared the island, just as she became aware of a canine whimpering sound and caught sight of white fur gleaming in the moonlight as a dog ran up and down the length of a large pen.

  Even as a novice dog-owner, it didn’t take Fiona long to recognise a bitch in heat. Judging by the look of her, she was an expensive pure-bred, probably put out on the island just to keep her away from the likes of Livingstone. She swore to herself and tried to position the boat between Livingstone and his irresistible goal.

  Livingstone tried to swim around the boat, but his low position in the water put him at a disadvantage and she managed to clip a lead onto his collar.

  “We don’t need to give the Parkers a lasting memory of you,” she muttered softly as she tried to pull the dog aboard without capsizing the boat. But he was too heavy and her position, too precarious, to manage an in-water rescue. There was nothing for it but to land on the island.

  A small dock had been built on the island as well, close to the dog-run, and she steered for it as best she could without smacking the dog with her oar. She kept the lead tightly tied around the oarlock, so that even when they managed to dock and Livingstone scrambled onto the low jetty, he couldn’t run to his impatient love interest that had started to whine.

  Unfortunately this victory for Fiona was a disaster for their secrecy. The female switched from a plaintive whining to outright barking, certainly loud enough to wake the castle residents.

  “In the boat now!” Fiona snapped at the distracted Livingstone, managing somehow to shove his heavy form off the edge of the dock and into the rowboat. Without wasting a second, Fiona clambered back in and started to row away from the clamorous vocalisations, talking in a low voice to keep Livingstone from moving around too much and upsetting the boat.

  The small craft was harder to handle with the weight of the dog in the bow, but Fiona did remarkably well until they were nearly back on the mainland, when Livingstone seemed to realise what was happening and made a sudden lunge to one side of the boat. Fortunately he chose the opposite side to the one where his leash was attached, so that the short length of lead prevented him from leaping all the way overboard. However, his weight on the edge was enough to tip the boat in the water, allowing freezing lake water to pour gently over the side.

  Fiona threw back her head in exasperation, frantically untying the lead so that he could swim away before he tipped the boat. But the damage was done and the water was now flowing freely into the boat, which was gently sinking into the dark water.

  They were so close to shore that Fiona gave up the struggle and kicked away from the sinking boat, gasping in shock as her body was immersed in the cold water. She could feel her Wellingtons filling up and kicked them off, swimming as best she could to the shore with the dog in tow.

  She had been so wrapped up in the peril to vessel and crew that she had barely had time to register the activity going on by the castle. Lights had come on suddenly and she could hear voices hurrying toward her in the darkness as the erratic beam of a flashlight scanned the shore.

  By now she and the dog were wading up through the muddy verge to reach solid ground. She immediately recognised Colin’s voice and guessed by the accent that the second man must be his assistant, McTavish.

  “Before my old man gets out here,” Colin was saying in hushed tones as he and the manager approached. Fiona tugged desperately on Livingstone’s lead but the dog was busily shaking himself dry while she tried desperately to keep moving before the cold made her dysfunctional.

  The flashlight beam caught them just as Fiona started to run, pulling at Livingstone and trying not to let her teeth chatter too loudly.

  “Fiona!” Colin exclaimed in complete surprise. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “Retrieving her dog, it looks like,” came the dry voice of McTavish, staring at her curiously.

  Now that she was trapped, all of her cold and adrenaline and fury came rushing to the front and she spun to face Colin with her eyes flashing dangerously. “We were just leaving,” she said, trying for haughty tones but sounding closer to hysterical. “Leaving your precious grounds, your isolated dog, your whole bloody world of splendid isolation. Don’t worry, we haven’t robbed the silverware or keyed your car, so no need to call the police. We can find our own way out.”

  Colin simply stood staring, flabbergasted. McTavish was the one to respond.

  “You’re lucky we aren’t pressing charges,” he admonished her with disapproval. “Multiple cases of trespassing and property damage and we’ve never asked you to pay a cent. So I trust you’ll comply with the letter we sent.”

  “I said we were leaving,” Fiona repeated through clenched teeth, her whole body now starting to shake in her soaking wet clothes as she hovered barefoot on the grass, ready to run home to the fire. “So if you’ll just let us go and save us the long speech, my dog and I are in need of a hot bath.”

  “I didn’t know it was you,” Colin protested feebly, finally reacting as she turned and started to run away. His now-familiar grasp on her wrist only made her wrench it away violently.

  “Just let me go,” she hissed, giving her head an aggressive toss to flick away the wet hair that was plastered to her c
heek. “This is no time for explanations or discussions. If there ever is a time with you.”

  “You need to come inside and put on dry clothing,” he said sensibly. “I can’t let you run off barefoot, wet and freezing into the night. Be reasonable, Fiona.”

  At this she began to laugh bitterly. “You’re telling me to be reasonable?” she blurted. “Now you’re going to be the sensible and serious one? It’s a bit late for that, Colin. You like to let things happen and just enjoy the ride, so sit back and enjoy the consequences of treating your tenants like dirt. Now I really have to go.”

  McTavish and Livingstone watched the proceedings with interest. Fiona resisted the urge to give Colin a good slap in the face and contented herself with just an icy final stare before deliberately turning her back on the two men and stalking away, hoping that she didn’t stumble on her rapidly-numbing feet.

  Colin still didn’t seem to grasp what was going on. He started after her again, just as another couple approached from the castle, distracting him. “At least take my jacket,” he called after her. “We can discuss things when you bring it back.”

  “I don’t need your bloody jacket or anything from you,” Fiona called back over her shoulder, breaking into a jog and feeling more sure of her feet. It wasn’t actually that cold and she was now confident that she could make it back to the cottage without freezing to death on the way. It wasn’t exactly a dignified retreat, her pajamas clinging to her legs as her hoodie dripped down her back, but neither was she forced to break her remaining pride by accepting his help. For whatever that proved.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “And that pretty much wraps it up, folks,” Fiona said to the assembled group in their well-cut walking garb as they gathered for goodbyes in the car park of Glen Gordon. Fiona was feeling even more self-conscious and underdressed than usual because she had been forced to borrow her brother’s baggy tracksuit trousers after her favourite hiking clothes had been misplaced by her mother. “Are there any questions, or have I convinced you all of why this lovely glen needs your protection?”